“DevOps is a reorganization” | DevOpsCon

This year at DevOpsCon we are trying to break the pattern of definitions. Our speakers are teaching us that without embracing the two-pizza team concept and acknowledging that open source is now default the DevOps conversation cannot evolve.

The first keynoter at this year’s DevOpsCon was Jeff Sussna, an internationally recognized IT consultant and systems/design thinking practitioner, who made it clear that DevOps is a reorganization and one should think of design from three levels: how components look like, how they interact and how they are turned back into a coherent whole.

Can you keep your promise?

According to Jeff Sussna, all the services offered to clients are in fact promises: Uber promises a ride, Amazon promises to deliver a product on time and Facebook promises to help you connect with your long-lost friends. A promise is basically a voluntary commitment to provide a certain benefit and goes hand in hand with an organization’s flexibility. Should an organization fail to keep its promise (therefore fail to deliver its service or product), it may mean that it wasn’t able to change the roadmap without altering outcome. As a result, the ability to redesign a promise is as important (if not more important) as the ability to design.

“Open is now default”

Red Hat’s Jan Wildeboer is encouraging people to communicate and transform open source into a conversational platform. Open innovation is the only way to go forward and be part of a growing upstream community.

“We will move from DevOps to blockchain to some other buzzword, but the important thing is to acknowledge the importance of talking,” Wildeboer claims. The lesson we should all learn is that bugs and error happen and hiding them under the carpet won’t do us a favor. Talking about DevOps is the only way to crush the secrecy barrier between teams and companies doing virtually the same thing.